The Badlings

Chapter 2. The Talking Book

When you open a new book, you hardly know where it will take you. That's the fun of reading. It might plunge you into dark foreboding places, full of terrible monsters, or it could take you into places frighteningly white and empty, like this one.

Bells rubbed her arms. Freezing wind cut through her clothes. She took a step, slipped on the ice, and promptly fell down. The ground met her with a bone-chilling hospitality. She looked around, but there was nothing to see except drifting, twirling snow.

"Hello?" Her voice sunk into silence.

"Anyone here?" She glanced up, fully expecting to see the gigantic faces of her friends. But there was only sky, swept over with depressing whiteness.

"What is this place?" She pinched herself. The scenery didn't change one bit. In fact, it appeared stubbornly snowier.

Bells sighed. "Okay, let's analyze this. Scientifically speaking, and based on the facts of what has just happened, I must be inside the book I found by the duck pond. Right? Right. I am inside it. I grew smaller and it pulled me in, and it looks like a frozen lake with a forest around it. What does this mean? This means that maybe it's a part of the story written on these pages, and that means that I am now inside this story. That makes sense, doesn't it? What else could it be?" She didn't know to whom she was talking, but the sound of her voice gave her courage. "I'm not scared. I'm not scared at all. I will figure this out." She fell silent. The first twinge of fear poked her like a shard of ice.

Bells rubbed her hands. "Okay, okay. I'm okay." She tried to remember how long Grand said it takes for someone to freeze to death. "I will be fine." Her head began to pound with the injustice of it all. "Why is it always me who has to test everything out? Why couldn't it be Peacock for a change?"

Bells kicked at the snow. "Great. Now I'm inside some stupid book that somehow opened up into this stupid place, and I have no stupid clue how to get out of here." As she was talking, she noticed that the wind quieted down and every snowflake appeared to have grown ears, carefully listening to her every word.

A suspicion formed in her head.

"Hello?" she called.

There was no answer, but she thought she heard a rustle that could be the clearing of a throat or the creaking of pages. The sound dissolved into nothing somewhere above her head, and all was still again, as if something was watching her.

"Hello?" she repeated.

No answer.

"Naturally, as my luck would have it, it appears that I'm alone here. But," she raised a finger, "if my hypothesis is correct and this is a story, there must be characters here—it must be a story about someone. I don't see anyone, and that is very strange. What kind of a story is this, if it only has a lake and a forest in it? A stupid story, that's what. I get it. This book is dumb, that's what I think." She spoke louder. "It must have been such a boring and dull book, that someone finally got fed up with it and has thrown it away. In fact, I think this book is the most lame and uninteresting book of them all!"

The snow stopped. The wind died with a disgruntled sigh.

"Lame?" rustled a papery voice. "Did you call me lame?"

Bells' heart plummeted, then sprung into her ears and hammered so hard, she thought she would faint.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" demanded the voice. "Or are you not only rude, but deaf also?"

Bells swallowed. "Who is it?" she asked timidly. "Is anyone here?" She looked about her, but there was nothing to see except snow.

"You're blind, too? Oh, this is getting better by the minute."